Posts tagged social media management

Part of my daily routine is going to the gym. The gym is a chance for me to think about what I’ve delivered that morning, plan out my day and dream about potential ideas for my business.

In the world of social media it’s important to step back and review what you have done and implement changes on a regular basis. And maybe, just maybe, it’s time for a makeover. Here are five cool tools you can use that just might deliver some new “oomph” to your social media efforts:

1. Ignite Facebook Fans

On average only 16 percent of your fans see your Facebook updates. Suck! This is a well-known number but something you should completely ignore because there’s no reason why you should be average!

But even if 50 percent of your fans see your Facebook updates there’s still the other 50 percent that don’t see them at all. And on top of this are they actually reading them? How often do you read all the updates on your Facebook page?

One strategy for ensuring more of your fans see your updates is converting your fans to eMail Subscribers. This means you can communicate with them over both channels and have a better chance of reaching them.

You can add a customized application to your Facebook page with a provider such as Heyo, Tabsite or a run a competition using Shortstack and start building those email subscribers.

2. Measure Conversion from Social Media Traffic

Social media is not necessarily all about sales but I’m sure you’d like to see some action from the updates you make. This may be visits to your website where you get people spending time there, subscribing to your email list or buying your products or services.

If you set up goals within Google Analytics, Google will start tracking social media activity for these goals. If you go to the traffic sources section of Google Analytics, select all traffic and then select the relevant goal you can view the conversion rate across any channel.

The goal set up in this report is related to getting email subscribers. From the image above you see that there is a 2.50% conversion rates from LinkedIn and 1.90% from Facebook. This gives you a goal to achieve higher on both channels.

If you don’t have goals set up in Google Analytics or an equivalent analytics program, then consider doing so as soon as possible!

3. Easily Optimize Your Content for Google

If you have a well-established blog with a large amount of traffic, you may not be too concerned about optimizing your content for Google. But if you want to get additional traffic and you want to ensure that it is relevant, then it’s important to help Google index your content correctly.

When writing blog posts there is a very useful free plugin called WordPress SEO which gives some guidelines that you can follow to optimize the content.

Using this plugin you specify the focus keywords you want Google to rank you on and then it then gives an indicator where these keywords are mentioned in the post in areas that are relevant for Google.

If you don’t have WordPress you can still identify focus keywords and make sure they are included in relevant areas as indicated in the image above.

4. Capture the Attention of your Website Visitors

What are you doing to capture the attention of your visitors when they come to your website?

Do you use popup’s, clear calls to action, a bar that appear across the top of the screen?

By getting your visitors attention you can get them to take action. Lead Converter is a useful tool for capturing attention. You can test out a banner that appears across the top of the screen, popup’s, boxes that slide out at the bottom the page and more.

If you had a free guide you could show a banner across the top of your screen after a visitor is on the page for a certain time. This captures the visitor’s attention like this:

The conversion chart will show what conversion you get from this and in this example it’s 2.11 percent. A conversion in this case is someone that clicks the “Yes, please” button and signs up as an e-mail subscriber.

2.11 percent is OK but not what I want so more testing is required. Think about how you can attract attention of visitors on your website to achieve your goals.

5. Start Using Slideshare

Slideshare was initially developed as a tool for sharing presentations but has since expanded out to videos, documents and much more. When you create your blog post it’s useful to consider where else you could promote this post. By changing your blog post into a presentation you could share it on Slideshare. This is very much a B2B platform so if you are targeting the business community Slideshare is ideal.

When you share out a presentation on Slideshare it’s indexed almost immediately so straight away you can start getting visitors. Just make sure you consider what your ‘focus keywords’ are when sharing out content to help Google index it correctly.

If you are interested in Slideshare a good starting point is Todd Wheatland’s book on SlideShare.

These are just five improvements you could make today for an almost instant social media makeover. Let us know your thoughts and please share any improvements that you would suggest.

In addition to offering low-cost plans, Sendible enables you to manage your Google+ pages, which is still a rare feature in social media management tools. (Note that this is limited to Google+ pages, as opposed to your individual profile or stream.)

The service also supports Facebook (profiles and pages), Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Tumblr, Ning, Bebo and a number of other options. The full array of services you can connect to Sendible is impressive, so most business owners should be able to manage their social media efforts quite handily. Sendible does not offer a free plan, however, which is a drawback.

Price: Free up to three team members managing 20 accounts, $20/month for five team members and unlimited accounts, custom pricing available for larger teams

Platforms: Web application, mobile web version

What you get for free with Jugnoo is impressive. Link up to 20 social accounts, managed by up to three team members. You also get access to web analytics, Google analytics and social analytics. This makes Jugnoo highly appealing, and if you need to connect additional accounts or give access to more team members to manage your content, leveling up costs just $20 per month. They do have a custom pricing model, as well.

Scheduled posts are enabled through BufferApp, which is itself a good option for business owners to manage their social networks.

Among free and low-cost options, Hootsuite is still the reigning champion, in part because its widespread use means there are many plugins and informational resources available. There are some viable contenders for small business owners to consider, however.

I investigated some of the platforms mentioned by commenters on my previous post. Although helpful, they do not fully meet the criteria outlined above:

Engagio – Engagio is a discovery tool, as opposed to a social media management tool. This service enables monitoring and engaging with Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and more through an inbox message format. Although this is helpful, this service lacks analytics and the ability to schedule posts, both of which are critical to small business owners.

Bottlenose – Still in beta, Bottlenose is a helpful tool for monitoring Facebook and Twitter feeds, LinkedIn, and more. The service offers some ability to engage by posting to linked accounts. Although Bottlenose is potentially useful for individuals, small business owners need need a tool that provides more holistic management capability (scheduling posts). The company is planning a pro version, which might have additional functionality.

Bundlepost – This service takes your existing RSS feed and makes it easy for you to select stories that would be of interest to your online audience. Then, you export prepared posts to a spreadsheet that gets uploaded to HootSuite. With minimal effort beyond scanning your news feeds, you’ve scheduled informative, helpful posts to go out over the course of the day, keeping you top of mind for your audience. In short, it’s a great tool, but works in concert with HootSuite, as opposed to providing an alternative to it.

The good news for small business owners is that options abound for you to customize your own no- or low-cost social media management solution.

What do you use? What would you recommend?

Kerry O’Shea Gorgone, JD/MBA, teaches New Media Marketing in the Internet Marketing Master of Science Program at Full Sail University in Winter Park Florida. Follow her on Twitter: @KerryGorgone

Entrepreneurs are universally short on time and money. Everyone knows that social media needs to play a role in their marketing efforts, but managing all of the different social networks can seem daunting.

There are numerous tools that make populating your Twitter feed, Facebook page, and other social media outlets relatively painless, and some are completely free. Of course, if you want more versatility (additional profiles, analytics, etc.), some services require premium subscriptions.

You need a simple solution that meets the following criteria:

Sends scheduled posts, so you can set updates to go out during the day (and night), while you run your business.

Connects all (or most of) your social media accounts, so you don’t have to visit multiple sites or launch multiple apps to update your feeds.

Provides analytics for posts, so you can determine what kind of posts draw the best engagement from your audience, and when you should post to achieve the best reach.

Shortens URLs, so you don’t have to visit bitly, tinyurl or some other site to shorten them yourself.

The pros and cons of the main contenders are covered here, along with when you’ll have to start paying (and how much).

Price: Free up to five social profiles; $9.99/month for unlimited social profiles, plus additional featuresPlatforms: Web application; Mobile apps for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry

Use Hootsuite to manage your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts. Through third-party apps, businesspeople can connect most of their social media accounts, from Tumblr and Reddit to StumbleUpon and Instagram. Pinterest is not yet integrated, but once the “taste graph” offers an API, that should change.

One of the earliest Twitter clients on the scene, Tweetdeck established a foothold among early adopters and won praise for its versatility.

With Tweetdeck, you can manage multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts at once, monitor your feeds, and display search results continuously so you can respond quickly when anyone mentions your company, brand or product.

Tweetdeck also makes it easy to post (or schedule) tweets containing text, photos or links, and monitor Twitter interactions and direct messages. Be careful to select the appropriate account before hitting send, or bad things can happen.

Buffer enables you to schedules posts and provides analytics on posts so you know which topics and times best engage your audience. The app connects to Twitter and Facebook, as well as LinkedIn, which makes this app another good option for B2B companies.

If your social media efforts are focused on Twitter and you have a small, trusted team, Twitter for Business might be your simplest option. You can allow multiple contributors to populate a single Twitter profile (not that this is always the best approach).

Nevertheless, you are going to love this video. Jay Baer and I usually see eye-to-eye but when we were on a panel at the recent Social Slam event we discovered we had radically opposing views of the future of how social media is integrated into a company. We decided this was such an interesting topic that it would make an interesting debate … so here it is in video form.

It’s a short video but it covers a lot of ground!

Will social media marketing be absorbed into the every day workplace or will it stand alone as a distinct career? Or both?

What is the future of social media consulting?

What is the most economical way for companies to deal with the frenzied pace of change in social media?

What do we make of Chris Brogan’s prediction that social media consultants will be irrelevant in two years?

I think you’re going to love this video, and of course it’s OK to disagree.

With Jay.

No seriously … I enjoy dissent and hope you know that by now. How else will we learn and grow? This is a GREAT discussion. Let me know what you think!

Subscribe to {Grow}

Welcome to {grow}

You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow.
Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark Schaefer